This article originally appeared in the February 22, 1983 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

From Aguadilla and San Lorenzo, from Barranquitas and Arecibo, they made their way to San Juan and hopped a $75 flight to Boston. Or they took the subway from the Bronx to the New York Port Authority terminal in Manhattan and caught a bus to Boston for eight bucks. Like so many groups before them, they found fetid apartments in once stately row houses in the South End and settled in to wait. They waited in the barely furnished apartments with the stained ceilings and the cracked plaster, waited for opportunities that could not be found in Aguadilla and Arecibo. They waited under the anxious gaze of their kids, under the compassionate eyes of the painting of Jesus, under the compelling gaze of the photo of the other messiah, Kennedy.

A few died waiting. Some migrated elsewhere. Some gave up. Some made it. Carmelo Iglesias, a young social worker in the 1960s, walked up and down the creaky stairs to their apartments to console them. He drank with the young men in a Tremont Street bar. He talked with the kids and old-timers on the corners of a South End just beginning to gentrify. One night, with a reporter in tow, Iglesias looked up from the street to the Pru, all lit up with the promise of a night out on the town - if you had a fat wallet. What does a Puerto Rican kid think, he was asked, if he stands there, looking up at such a sight? “If he’s introspective,” Iglesias said, “he’d probably want to take a rifle and blow every damn light out.” It was 1966.

It is 1983. The other night, Carmelo Iglesias, still counseling the needy, met with 20 others, many of them Latinos, in a nice restaurant. Nobody in the room believed that life here and now for the Puerto Rican, the Costa Rican, the Colombian, the Dominican is easy and full with promise. But in the years since he looked up at the Pru, Iglesias has seen Spanish-speaking teachers hired in the schools, translators put on duty in hospital emergency rooms, bilingual education implemented for the kids. Creating such change was not easy, nor are the changes enough. But they are the beginning of what is, in part, a political story of a community scrapping for its place in this most intensely politicized state. The meeting the other night was to discuss building a sophisticated city-wide organization to run a Puerto Rican, Felix Arroyo, for the Boston School Committee.

Ten Democrats were fighting for two state-rep seats in a district encompassing parts of the South End, Jamaica Plain, Back Bay, Mission Hill, and Parker Hill. The seats were traditionally Irish, the incumbents spawned from the political breeding grounds of Mission Hill and Parker Hill. A guy at the city’s election department had a tough time with one of the names, Alex Rodriguez. He accented the wrong syllable. There were three incumbents - William Carey, Joseph Loughman, and David John O’Connor - and at least one of them was going to lose, because redistricting had turned three seats to two.

Swan song for Southie? South Boston is famous for producing politicians the way Detroit is known for manufacturing automobiles.

Final four? Some of Boston's savviest political insiders were confident of one thing going into last week's preliminary election: the top four finishers in the at-large City Council race would not be the same quartet to actually win those four seats in November.

Murphy’s big tent In the past few years, Murphy has recast himself to reflect the changing city.

Voto para mi? In East Boston, hopes have been high that Democratic candidate Gloribell Mota might draw the neighborhood’s Hispanic residents into the political process.

Bring back Maris Alex Rodriguez, media lightning rod and three-time American League MVP, was never my favorite, even before he wore pinstripes.

4. Alex Rodriguez And here everyone thought his wife divorced him because he was allegedly pinch-hitting with a pop star. Turns out Major League Baseball’s holier-than-thou, all-natural poster boy was juicier than Madonna’s tour tights — which makes us wonder: could those performance enhancers have been shrinking Alex’s, er, strike zone? Too bad they haven’t come up with a steroid that lets you hit in the clutch, eh, Rod?

ALEXANDER COCKBURN’S $10,000 ARAB CONNECTION | July 23, 2012 Village Voice staff writer Alexander Cockburn, a journalist noted for his media criticism and for his biting criticism of Israel, accepted $10,000 in 1982 as a fellowship from an organization promoting Arab causes.

POLITICOS LATINOS | October 09, 2008 This article originally appeared in the February 22, 1983 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

YOU COULD LOOK IT UP | October 09, 2008 This article originally appeared in the February 8, 1983 issue of the Boston Phoenix.